Connecticut reached the two million registered voter mark earlier this month.
Friday morning, Facebook provided an unexpected increase in registration with direct pushes on personal pages across the country. With National Voter Registration Day set for next Tuesday, Connecticut's top elections official, Denise Merrill, said it was a welcomed sight.
“It is always amazing to me how many people see these things," the Secretary of the State told NBC Connecticut in an interview. "So, even today, today is the first day that people have been seeing this Facebook feed, we’re already getting hundreds if not thousands of people registering to vote in Connecticut.”
Another major contributor has been the recently implemented, "motor voter program" which signs people up to vote when they visit the Department of Motor Vehicles.
There was significant criticism of the program, mainly from Republicans, during the most recent legislative session for fears that the registration of more voters would lead to even longer wait times for routine transactions.
Merrill acknowledged the timing wasn't great to roll out a new avenue for voter sign-ups.
"It was a miracle of bad timing. It was just at the low point for DMV with the lines and all of that.”
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However, she adds, "it wasn't a big leap," and over the summer there were seldom if any complaints that the motor-voter program was slowing down the delay-plagued agency.
In the end, the program has led to major gains in voter registration. So far, more than 20,000 people have signed up to vote through DMV,
“When you think that we registered 15,000 voters in one month, that’s more voters than we’ve registered from any source, ever," Merrill said.
Next week, voter registration could increase even more, with Facebook expected to push even more users to register.
